Prince Charles lobbies Andy Burnham on complementary medicine for NHS

Edzard Ernst,the professor of complementary medicine at the Peninsula Medical
School at Exeter, may have accused him of promoting "quackery"
with some of the products in his Duchy Originals range, but the Prince of
Wales's messianic fervour for alternative ways of treating illness and
ailments clearly remains undiminshed.

Tim Walker

10:30PM GMT 31 Oct 2009

Mandrake hears that the prince had "a spirited exchange" with Andy Burnham, the health secretary, when he received him at Clarence House last week. "Some forms of complementary medicine are available on the NHS, but the prince is keen that more should now be available," whispers my man in Whitehall.

"His view is that they often serve to prevent illness and, for that reason, could actually end up saving the NHS money. Andy is open to new ideas, but there is a limit to how far he feels it is prudent to go with this."

Burnham is certainly aware that complementary medicine on the NHS is controversial. After the prince commissoned the Smallwood report, which made the financial case for increasing NHS provision of complementary medicine, a group of distinguished doctors wrote to a national newspaper demanding an end to the funding of "unproven or disproved treatments," such as homeopathy and reflexology.

Professor Ernst's comments this Spring in relation to a detox tincture produced by Duchy Originals – he felt it amounted to "financially exploiting the vulnerable" – angered the prince, whose spokesman denied "quackery" was involved. In the Spring, the Advertising Standards Authority criticised an email that Duchy Originals had sent out to advertise its Echina-Relief, Hyperi-Lift and Detox Tinctures products saying it was misleading.

Burnham heard Charles out, and, at the end of it, he was given some products from the Duchy range. Burnham's spokesman and Clarence House declined to comment, but if the Health Secretary has a spring in his step this week, you'll know why.